


a true and gentle knight

by icygrace



Series: royal commands [2]
Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Versions of the Same Story, Angst, F/M, Mad Kings, Scotland, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:57:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3397778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icygrace/pseuds/icygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s clearly a form letter some secretary is writing on behalf of the queen, but there is a note at the end in Mary’s familiar hand, signed Marie R. with a flourish. It’s the command of a queen wrapped in the request of a friend.</p><p>One of two alternate sequels to the thinnest of threads</p>
            </blockquote>





	a true and gentle knight

**Author's Note:**

> Reign does not belong to me!
> 
> Spec fic/historical AU after Francis’s death. Also fiddling a bit with the historical timeline (Francis’s reign lasts two years rather than one-ish; rather than nine months, Mary takes over a year and a half to return to Scotland).

They’ve been comfortably settled in Scotland for nearly three years when Kenna’s father receives news that changes everything.

 

Father frowns as he reads over the missive that was waiting for him at the head of the table when the two of them came down for breakfast. “The queen is returning.”

 

Kenna puts down her spoon, suddenly having lost her appetite. “Does it say when?”

 

“No, but it’s suggested we lords should be ready to attend our liege and pledge fealty to her at Holyrood when she is returned.”

 

\---

 

Eventually a summons – officially an invitation, but they both served royals long enough to know better – arrives for Bash and Kenna. It’s clearly a form letter some secretary is writing on behalf of the queen, but there is a note at the end in Mary’s familiar hand: _Do come. It will be the greatest comfort to see your familiar faces among so many strangers. I’ve missed you dearly._ It’s signed _Marie R._ , with a flourish.

 

It’s the command of a queen wrapped in the request of a friend.

 

\---

 

Holyrood Palace is bedecked so splendidly that Father makes disapproving noises, saying the crown “simply hasn’t got the money for displays like this.”

 

But Kenna must admit that, very deep down, she missed displays like this. Nearly as much as she misses the very brief periods in which her life was not so complicated: her childhood, her time at French court before her dalliance with Henry, the period between the plague and Francis’s descent into madness, the time after their departure from France for Scotland until now.

 

Now everything is changing.

 

\---

 

Mary is beautiful as ever, despite the faint new lines around her eyes and mouth. Her first words are for Tara. “My, you’re a pretty girl.”

 

Tara is really too small to attend such a formal event, but Mary insisted on meeting her as soon as possible. She promptly hides her face against Bash’s side. She’s very much her papa’s girl.

 

With her rich gown and her intricate crown and hair swept up in a rather dramatic fashion, Mary does cut an imposing figure – which was likely exactly the intended effect, in order to intimidate the restive nobles. 

 

“Don’t be frightened, love,” Bash coaxes gently. “The queen is a friend of Mama and Papa’s.”

 

Tara slowly turns her head toward Mary.

 

“And she just paid you a very kind compliment,” Bash continues patiently. “What do you say?”

 

“Thank you, ma’am.” Tara’s enunciation is careful as she does her best to properly address the unfamiliar woman in front of her.

 

Tara is too little to know the difference _ma’am_ and _my lady_ and _Your Grace_ and all the rest, but Mary is their queen, so Kenna corrects her, fearing Mary may feel slighted otherwise. “It’s ‘thank you, _Your Majesty_ ,’ darling,” Kenna corrects. “That’s what you say to the queen.”

 

“Don’t be silly. It’s true that I _am_ , so that’s how others must address me, but you are family and you may call me Aunt Mary,” Mary tells Tara in the firm yet gentle tone she once used with Charles and little Henry.

 

Kenna recognizes the significance of the command. Though Francis – who linked them as family in law – is dead, Mary will continue to claim them as her kin in name.

 

Tara hesitates, but Mary nods encouragingly, until she finally, deliberately, repeats Mary’s words in her sweet childish lisp. “Aunt Mary.”

 

Mary’s smile is more sincere than any she ever wore after Francis’s coronation as she moves to embrace Kenna.

 

\---

 

That night, Mary requests her presence in her chambers, alone. She calls for chocolate to drink and apple tarts for a treat – “they’re still your favorite?” – as soon as Kenna crosses her threshold.

 

She’s surprised Mary remembered.

 

It’s strange. She rarely spent time alone with just Mary without Greer or Lola before leaving court and their absent friends linger like ghosts between them.

 

Greer has Lord Castleroy and his children and two children of her own that tie her firmly to France now, while Francis’s death freed Lola of all ties save to her young son and his holdings. Disowned by her family and now a wealthy woman in her own right, Lola is unlikely ever to set foot on Scottish soil again.

 

“I’ve so much to tell you,” Mary starts. “I hardly know where to begin.”

 

“At the beginning?” Kenna quips.

 

“You always knew how to lighten things,” Mary says gratefully. “But these are heavy things.” She sighs and they sit in silence until Kenna speaks again.

 

“Why did you take so long to return?”

 

“When Francis died, I . . . was devastated. He is the love of my life. I could not . . . still cannot imagine replacing him or ever giving my heart to another. But acting on the advice of my mother’s family, I eventually began looking for a new marriage and a new alliance. They felt it would be best for me to return with the strength of an ally at my back, what with the Protestants. But nothing came through and I couldn’t continue to delay my return with my mother dead. I’m needed here and there was nothing else holding me in France anymore.”

 

Her throat feels tight listening to her old friend, because Mary’s life these past few years strikes her as unbearably sad.

 

“But I need friends I can trust at my side, because the world is a dark and dangerous place for queens alone. Will you help me, Kenna? You and Bash?”

 

Kenna forgets herself for a moment, forgets the reality of their world, seeing not her queen before her, but a vulnerable, lonely girl she once loved like a sister, now alone in the world, and nods, a wordless promise she fears even then she will come to regret.

 

\---

 

She finds herself laughing at her own misgivings when letters patent arrive at Livingston House a few short weeks after their return from Holyrood. They’re packing for court, where they have some of the best rooms in the palace awaiting them. “An earldom, Father!” She thinks she may be floating rather than walking.

 

Her father brings her back down to earth in the most terrible way. “I’m pleased for you and for Sebastian, but –”

 

“But?”

 

“Take care that there are no . . . strings attached to the queen’s generosity.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“She’s a woman alone now and she nearly married him once, didn’t she?”

 

Kenna feels as though her blood freezes in her veins at the thought, but she takes a breath and tries to think of every reason why her father is wrong.

 

Bash offers a beleaguered queen nothing – no royal alliance, no armies, no wealth. He has only the title, lands, and income Mary herself has just bestowed on him.

 

And yet . . . Kenna scorned Bash once herself, but soon found his hand and his heart to be more than enough to make up for his lack of title or wealth, more precious than all the money in the world.

 

“It isn’t just kings who take lovers, my girl. Do you think Marie de Guise had no men to warm her bed all the years she ruled in her daughter’s name?”

 

Mary once let Bash’s heart and his hand slip through her fingers for Francis, who she loved. Francis, who went mad, Francis, who is dead.

 

Mary is young still and passionate and _alive_ , and so is Bash.

 

But so is Kenna and _Kenna_ has Bash. She is not willing to lose him and she’s not as naïve as she once was.

 

(And he loves _her_.)

 

\---

 

Father passes away just before they’re meant to return to court.

 

It devastates her more than she could have imagined – she has her breakfast brought to her in bed every morning because the thought of eating without him downstairs has her fit to weep – and, as glad as she is to have had these better years with him, she sometimes wishes she hadn’t, if only so the loss of him would hurt less.

 

She feels unready to return to court when she finally must after an “appropriate” mourning period. But she is Mary’s chief lady-in-waiting and ladies-in-waiting do not make their queens wait.

 

The only thing that makes the return bearable is that Andrew accompanies them in order to pay his respects to the queen in his role as the new earl. Callum, who rubbed stubbornly at his eyes when told he would remain behind, travels with them as well.  

 

\--

 

Shortly after their return, the queen invites Bash to join her privy council.

 

“It will look very ill,” Andrew cautions as soon as Kenna shares the news.

 

If anything, the invitation had been a relief to Kenna, suggesting the fine title, finer lands, and handsome income Mary had granted Bash were an inducement meant to guilt him into taking on the rather burdensome responsibility of a spot on the Privy Council, rather than anything more ominous. That perhaps Father’s warning had been that of a man who knew, somehow, that he had little time left and feared for those he was leaving behind. “Why? Bash was the king’s deputy, he was her brother-in-law, remains a trusted friend and –”

 

“He was deputy to the king of _France_ –”

 

“Who was also king consort of Scotland!”

 

Andrew speaks right over her. “Sebastian is a trusted friend who is _French_ –”

 

“With a Scotswoman for a wife –”

 

Andrew continues undeterred, Bash’s habit of speaking plainly seeming to have rubbed off on him over their years in the same household. “He’s kin to the boy king of France, whose regent is the infamously venomous Catherine de Medici. He’s the bastard son of a _French_ king who tried to usurp his brother’s place as dauphin of _France_. During the attempted usurpation, he was betrothed to our queen. All of that will come back to haunt him and make him the object of mistrust and suspicion if he accepts the position.” Andrew scoffs. “Far be it from me to speak ill of our queen, but, if she cares for you both at all, she’s acted foolishly. She’s put a great big target on his back.”  

 

“She means to honor him, to honor _us_ , her friends who serve her loyally.”

 

“At best, people will think she’s elevating him because he’s her lover.”

 

What reason has her husband given her family to suspect him so? “He would never –”

 

Andrew chews at his lip. “I wouldn’t think so either, I’ve come to know him well and think of him as a brother, but . . . You _are_ my sister and I must think of you first. That means looking for hidden dangers, even if you don’t want to hear them. And the truth is he betrayed his own brother for her once.”

 

Kenna fists her hands in her skirts with sudden, impotent fury. But not wanting their disagreement to be obvious to the others around them, she kisses Andrew’s cheek before walking away.

 

\---

 

In the weeks and months that follow, she tries to ignore the fears filling her mind.

 

But nearly every day, her husband spends hours closeted away with their queen, “advising” her well into the night on everything from handling the Protestants to handling her suitors. In her most overwrought moments, Kenna wonders how quickly their queen would accept one of the men she keeps at arm’s length if she suddenly found herself with child.

 

And what if she can’t marry quickly enough? Or what if she can, but the child looks too obviously like its true father to fool anyone, let alone a court full of people waiting to see their queen fall? Kenna can see Mary’s imaginary child in her mind’s eye, raven-haired like Mary and green-eyed like Bash and Tara. Imagine the great Mary, Queen of Scots, revealed to all the world as a strumpet and a whore!

 

The maniacal edge to her laughter as she imagines the scandal would make Kenna fear herself and make her fear for her own sanity if she didn’t know that she only laughs so she won’t cry.  She often wonders if the Valois madness she once desperately feared has passed over her husband and seized her instead.

 

\---

 

It is not easy for her as she devotes her time to waiting on Mary and socializing with the other lords’ wives, interactions arranged primarily for the purpose of surreptitiously gleaning useful information for Mary from their silly chatter.

 

She cannot help it when her eyes wander to Mary herself.

 

Or to her husband.

 

At the Easter feast, she finds herself watching her husband watch their queen with a scowl on his face.

 

The queen is flirting rather shamelessly with the handsome Lord Darnley.

 

“She’s making herself look foolish,” Bash growls.

 

Kenna shrugs. It’s true that Mary’s behaving a bit heedlessly, but who are they to ruin her fun? “I don’t think she much cares right now. She did everything she was supposed to do and look where it’s gotten her. A childless widow, with the grand union of Scotland and France come to naught. Let her enjoy the attentions of a clever, handsome man.”

 

“Clever? Darnley’s an idiot. And they’re cousins. She’d need a dispensation if she marries him. Has she even considered that?”

 

“Who mentioned marriage? And why do you care so much about her marital prospects?” Kenna snaps. She’d taken even more care than usual in dressing tonight, choosing her most flattering gown – one that complimented both her complexion and her still-fine figure and allowed for wearing her cherished emeralds – and dressing her hair the way she knows Bash prefers, but her husband’s barely spared her a look.

 

“She is our queen and I’m one of her councilors. She’s also our friend and she was my brother’s wife. Whatever Francis may have done in later life, he was my brother and I loved him.” He hasn’t spoken of Francis that way in years, not even mentioned him by name. “He would want me to make sure she doesn’t throw herself away on a man who won’t treat her as she deserves, who’ll be a hindrance rather than a helpmeet.”

 

“Who _do_ you think would be a helpmeet for our queen?” she asks, rather more sharply than she intended.

 

Bash makes as though to speak, but no words pass his lips.

 

 _Exactly_.“If you’ll excuse me, I feel rather tired all of a sudden.”

 

Suddenly his face folds with concern and he stretches out a hand to her. “Kenna –”

 

“ _Don’t_. I wish to be alone.”

 

\---

 

They’re going on five years of marriage, but she remembers her disappointed words to him in the first weeks after they were wed as clearly as if she’d just spoken them.

 

_What was at stake when Mary batted her eyes and you rushed off to be her true and gentle knight? You’ll never be that knight for me. You’ll be my husband, but never that._

Her tears soak her pillow so thoroughly that it’s unusable for the rest of the evening. She finds herself wishing Mary had never returned to turn her life upside down, treasonously lamenting the fact that their queen’s ship didn’t sink to the bottom of the ocean before she ever set foot back on Scottish soil.

 

\---

 

Kenna wakes up to find her husband staring at her from his seat on the remarkably uncomfortable chair nearest their bed. He’s still in last night’s rumpled clothes and has some rather dreadful-looking bags under his eyes.

 

“A late night, husband?”

 

He ignores the barbed question. “Last night I spent a while wondering what had gotten it into you. Then I remembered how we began. You once loved my father and even before I loved you it nearly drove me mad to think of you alone with him again, even after I knew you didn’t want it, that it was only for the good of your country. I loved Mary once and now I spend most of my time with her, for the good of your country. But I never stopped to think how it must look to you or make you feel.”

 

She feels something in her soften as he speaks, but she won’t let on, not so easily. “You should have done.”

 

“Yes, but I didn’t. Now I have and I’m sorry, but I assure you, you have nothing to fear.” He reaches for her hand and she lets him take it. “You are mine and I am yours and no one, not even a queen, _nothing_ will change that. I told you once, years ago, that our marriage had stopped being something that happened to me. That you are what I want.” He kisses her hand. “That hasn’t changed, not ever in all the time since. It never will. I _will_ do my best to help Mary bear the burdens of ruling in these troubled times, but if there’s ever a choice to be made, I will choose you and our daughter and myself.”

 

“You swear it?”

 

“I do.”

 

\---

 

Bash keeps his promise, even when things turn most dire.

 

When their queen is forced to abdicate in favor of her little son by her late husband, the handsome, foolish Lord Darnley, Bash doesn’t do anything mad, bad, or rash to help her keep power. Instead, he accedes to the agreement meant to establish peace in the kingdom the infant James will rule after his mother.

 

Under that agreement, Mary will support her scheming half-brother, the Earl of Moray, as regent, charging him with governing Scotland on the boy king’s behalf as long as Bash is charged with governing the boy’s upbringing and education.

 

“We will love him and care for him and keep him safe. He will know that you love him, that you did what had to be done to protect him and his birthright,” Kenna promises Mary on the eve of her departure for France, where Mary will stay under the protection of King Charles IX – or rather, in truth, Catherine, of all people.

 

It is the last time they ever see Mary, because this time her ship does sink to the bottom of the sea.   


End file.
